Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(3,991)
- Faculty Publications (1,260)
- 2020
- Working Paper
Reinventing Retail: The Novel Resurgence of Independent Bookstores
By: Ryan Raffaelli
This study examines how community-based brick-and-mortar retailers can achieve sustained market growth in the face of online and big box retail competition. The appearance of Amazon.com in 1995 led to a significant decline in the number of independent bookstores in the... View Details
- January 2020 (Revised March 2020)
- Case
SmileDirectClub: Better Is Better
By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Aldo Sesia
- January 2020 (Revised March 2020)
- Case
LOLA: Do You Know What's in Your Tampon?
By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Aldo Sesia
LOLA is a direct-to-consumer (DTC) business launched in 2015. What started as a company to provide women with organic and transparent material-labeled tampons via a subscription model, had, by 2019 evolved to include additional menstrual and sexual wellness products.... View Details
- January 2020 (Revised October 2021)
- Case
Zara: An Integrated Store and Online Model (A)
By: Antonio Moreno
In 2010, amidst the growth of ecommerce and the emergence of new, purely online, fashion players, Zara launched its first online store, Zara.com. Since then, Zara’s online business had grown at a fast pace. By 2018, 12% of Inditex Group’s total sales came from the... View Details
Keywords: Stores; Integration; Operations; Business Model; Strategy; E-commerce; Retail Industry; Retail Industry; Europe
- January 2020
- Case
The June Oven
By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Christian Godwin
The June Oven was a smart oven which was capable of identifying food and cooking it accordingly. This type of smart oven represented the next step in the long history of oven and stove development. Due to the widespread use of traditional ovens, the market for the June... View Details
Keywords: Business Ventures; Trends; Customers; Design; Entrepreneurship; Food; Goods and Commodities; Innovation and Invention; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Demand and Consumers; Distribution; Product Development; Sales; Information Technology; Internet and the Web; Applications and Software; Retail Industry; Retail Industry; Retail Industry; Retail Industry; Retail Industry; United States
- December 2019
- Case
Walmart Ecommerce (A): Picking up the Pace
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman
This case is an abridged version (part 1 of 2) of "Walmart's Omnichannel Strategy: Revolution or Miscalculation?" HBS Case No. 720-370. The (A) case discusses Walmart's early forays into online retail, as well as improvements made under Doug McMillon beginning in 2014.... View Details
- December 2019
- Case
Walmart Ecommerce (B): Omnichannel Pursuits
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman
This case is an abridged version (part 2 of 2) of "Walmart's Omnichannel Strategy: Revolution or Miscalculation?" HBS Case No. 720-370. The (B) case describes Walmart’s omnichannel strategy in 2018 as it battled Amazon for online retail market share. Walmart aimed to... View Details
- December 2019 (Revised May 2020)
- Case
Income Inequality and the CEO Pay Ratio at TJX Cos
By: Ethan Rouen and Akari Furukawa
TJX Companies reported a CEO pay ratio of 1,596-to-1 in 2019, leaving board chair Carol Meyrowitz with a host of questions about whether, and how, she could take action to address concerns raised by having one of the highest pay ratios in the S&P 500. As a retail... View Details
- December 2019 (Revised January 2020)
- Case
Boll & Branch
By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Mel Martin
Boll & Branch is a direct-to-consumer (DTC) business launched in 2015. It was the first Fair-Trade Certified manufacturer of linens. The case provides background on the company, its start, business model, and evolution through 2019. View Details
- December 2019
- Article
The Impact of Increasing Search Frictions on Online Shopping Behavior: Evidence from a Field Experiment
By: Donald Ngwe, Kris J. Ferreira and Thales Teixeira
Many online stores are designed such that shoppers can easily access any available discounted products. We propose that deliberately increasing search frictions by placing small obstacles to locating discounted items can improve online retailers’ margins and even... View Details
- November 2019
- Supplement
Gillette: Cutting Prices to Regain Share
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher
After losing market share to low-priced competitors such as Harry’s and Dollar Shave Club for several years, Gillette decided to fight back by cutting prices on its razors and blades in April 2017. Bonnie Herzog, an equity analyst at Wells Fargo, must assess how the... View Details
- November 2019
- Teaching Note
JD: Envisioning the Future of Retail (A) and (B)
By: Feng Zhu and Shirley Sun
Teaching Note for HBS Nos. 618-051 and 619-079. View Details
Keywords: E-commerce
- November 2019
- Case
Gillette: Cutting Prices to Regain Share
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher
After losing market share to low-priced competitors such as Harry’s and Dollar Shave Club for several years, Gillette decided to fight back by launching new products and increasing advertising. When these efforts failed to stem the losses, Gillette decided to cut the... View Details
- November 2019 (Revised April 2020)
- Case
Purple Innovation, Inc.: The Online to Offline Marketing Challenge
By: Elie Ofek and Nakisha Williams
This case focuses on Purple Innovation Inc. (Purple), a company that started out in the Direct to Consumer (DTC) mattress space. In late 2018, after a successful launch and IPO with sales predominantly originating from its website, Purple was looking to sustain its... View Details
- November 2019 (Revised April 2020)
- Case
Away: Scaling a DTC Travel Brand
By: Jill Avery and Joseph B. Fuller
Away, a direct-to-consumer, digital native e-commerce seller of travel luggage, is debating how to invest its latest round of venture funding. How quickly could and should Away scale and what were the most promising growth trajectories to maximize its potential? Three... View Details
Keywords: Brand Management; DTC; Brand Extension; Lifestyle Brand; Customer Segmentation; Retailing; Scaling And Growth; Startup; Brands and Branding; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Marketing Channels; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Consumer Behavior; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Startups; E-commerce; Consumer Products Industry; Travel Industry; United States; North America
- 2019
- Book
Operations in an Omnichannel World
By: Santiago Gallino and Antonio Moreno
The world of retailing has changed dramatically in the past decade. Sales originating at online channels have been steadily increasing, and even for sales transacted at brick-and-mortar channels, a much larger fraction of sales is affected by online channels in... View Details
- Article
Can Big-Box Retailers Provide Local Health Care?
National retailers, most notably Walmart and Best Buy, are making big bets on their ability to fill this need for local health care. At first glance, these moves are a bit surprising given that these companies have not traditionally been focused on health care... View Details
- October 2019 (Revised June 2022)
- Case
Toys 'R' Us: Come Buy My Toys
By: Nori Gerardo Lietz, Erica Segall, Alejandro Botto and Terrence Shu
Keywords: Private Equity; Retail; Finance; Leveraged Buyout; Leverage; Leveraged Buyouts; Bankruptcy
- 2020
- Working Paper
Tariff Passthrough at the Border and at the Store: Evidence from U.S. Trade Policy
By: Alberto Cavallo, Gita Gopinath, Brent Neiman and Jenny Tang
We use micro data collected at the border and the store to characterize the price impact of recent US trade policy on importers, exporters, and consumers. At the border, import tariff passthrough is much higher than exchange rate passthrough. Chinese exporters did not... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Real Exchange Rate Behavior: New Evidence from Matched Retail Goods
By: Alberto Cavallo, Brent Neiman and Roberto Rigobon
We use a dataset containing daily prices for thousands of matched retail products in nine countries to study tradable-goods real exchange rates. Prices were collected from the websites of large multi-channel retailers and then carefully matched into narrowly-defined... View Details